The Power of Positive Campaigning

Gingrich has tapped into three key desires of Republican voters. First, they want someone who will talk about solutions to our nation’s problems. Secondly, they want someone who can unite us to defeat Obama rather than pitting us against one other. Third, they want someone who acts presidential, and an attack dog is not presidential. It was a similar positive focus that led to the rise of Mike Huckabee in 2008 despite a lack of funding and organization.

Positive campaigns fly in the face of the advice from political consultants. When a campaign finds itself down in the polls, the biggest temptation is to start throwing bombs to knock down the leading candidates. The tactic can work in some situations, particularly in a two-person race On viewing a negative attack, voters can choose either to punish the attacked candidate based on the content of the ad, or they can choose to punish the attacking candidate for going negative.

However, as former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) learned, voters in multi-candidate presidential primary campaigns have a third option. In 2004, Gephardt’s campaign desperately needed to repeat its 1988 win in Iowa to obtain the momentum to continue in the race. To win Iowa, Gephardt set out to knock down frontrunner Howard Dean through a series of negative attacks. Gephardt succeeded in taking Dean down as Dean finished third and issued his famous caucus night scream. However, Gephardt finished a distant fourth and was forced out of the race. Gephardt learned that Iowa voters could punish both him and Howard Dean by voting for other candidates.

A similar dynamic has been at work in this campaign. Millions of dollars and countless hours of airtime have been extended by other campaigns, Super PACs, talk radio, and media outlets casting doubt on the other campaigns. Newt Gingrich was the beneficiary of these attacks by not going negative.

The campaign is heating up as Iowa votes in a matter of days and Newt Gingrich at last succumbed to the temptation to go negative with his attack on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital and then lobbed additional attacks on Romney and Ron Paul. Gingrich gave in to the natural human reaction to return fire on the attacking campaigns. History would suggest that in this case, the natural human reaction may not be the right one. Gingrich’s recent decline in polling shows this.

The battle for Iowa remains up for grabs with Romney and Paul tied in the latest RCP polling average and three other candidates at double digits. While consultants and political insiders may celebrate the latest clever attack ad, what the course of this campaign suggests is that the smartest focus for the last days of this campaign is to convince voters that the candidate has what it takes to take America in a positive direction and that he can unite the GOP and the American people in order to do that.

Adam Graham is a contributor at Race42012.com and host of the Truth and Hope Report podcast. His personal site is Adam's Blog. He is author of novel, "Tales of the Dim Knight," from Splashdown Books.

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1.
Ceteris Paribus

If negative campaigns don’t work, why is Romney on top in Iowa? Romney’s super PAC and other surrogates have relentlessly, and apparently successfully, attacked anyone who was ahead of Romney. The other leader in Iowa is Ron Paul who also was extremely negative about both Gingrich and Perry.

Gingrich was brought down by a withering, relentless, and expensive run of negative attack ads. Now that Rommey leads, where are the relentless attack ads against him? I guess the richest candidate wins. The cronies tend to have very deep pockets. It will be sad to see Iowa Republicans fooled again.

The only person the Republicans should go negative on is Obama. Heck, Republicans don’t even have to technically go “negative” at all. All the Republicans need to do is state Obama’s record. That would be enough to convince any clear-minded individual that Obama has been a disaster. From domestic policy to foreign policy, Obama has been a disaster that HAS happened and the only way to stop it is to vote him out of office in 2012. That is the message you want to give voters in 2012. And it WILL work. Just look what happened to Jimmy Carter. The polls actually had him tied with Ronald Reagan on election day, and look what happened to Carter. Carter lost in a landslide. So stay positive and just tell the truth about Obama. That will be enough to get the job done.

The primary mission is to defeat Obama, so that’s where the focus and energy must be. There are only two messages: what Obama has wrought and how the candidate plans to fix it. Every Republican running should hammer Obama with an unrelenting list of his failures, fubars and WTFs.

I am a big Newt fan but feel like the negative campaign Obama will need to run will hurt Newt so much he would lose the election. We must always run the most conservative candidate that CAN WIN, which at this point is Mitt. Can anyone help me-What’s wrong with Huntsman? What he did in Utah seems very conservative and he would match up well with Obama. Does anyone have truthful information on him. Remember PARTY TRUMPS PERSON-in a two party system

Galen’s got it right. If some mild attack info-ads cause Newt to go weepy, well, then he doesn’t have the necessary interior mail to deal with Obama arsenal. And to buttress a point … the goal is to move Obama onto a long retirement. The best candidate to do that … however imperfect … is the choice. And as far as I can see, it’s Romney. By far.

I respectfully disagree. Romney has been running a hard negative campaign, especially here in Iowa; every day my mailbox is filled with fliers about how Gingrich is going to destroy America, usually stamped by one of the Romney campaign’s groups.

But I think you’re right about it hurting the campaigner, at least in one sense. Now I’m definitely not voting for Romney.

Don’t do it [go negative], Newt. Stay positive on America and her people. We will be “with you” not “for you” when the chips are down. In the end it’s about US [both ways] and the country we choose to be. You can do it. Dream big dreams, do what can be done and please stay focused. You have now had your cold shoeless night at Valley Forge [thanks, Mitt], but the WAR is yet to come. You just gotta love a guy who can come back from “the dead” again and again.